THE BIRDS OF LIBERIA 683 
beneath larger trees through which the forest path ran. Although the speci- 
men was doubtless killed, we were unable to retrieve it after several attempts 
for it fell in thick cover where a large column of driver ants swarmed over the 
ground and vegetation. It must be an insectivorous species altogether. 
Halcyon badius badius J. and E. Verreaux. Chocolate-backed Kingfisher 
Halcyon (Cancrophaga) badia J. and E. Verreaux, Mag. de Zool., 1851, p. 264: Gaboon. 
Size of a thrush; top and sides of head and upper back dull reddish chocolate; rump bright 
blue; wings black with a bright blue bar; tail blue edged with black above; below white, breast 
feathers faintly edged with dusky; bill all red. Liberia to Belgian Congo. 
This handsome kingfisher is apparently everywhere uncommon, and though 
like the preceding species, a bird of the heavy forest, it may occupy a slightly dif- 
ferent niche, if we may judge from the fact that the only bird we saw was perched 
on the lookout for insects in the lower story of forest trees, where the branches 
were somewhat open, at a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet. Our speci- 
men contained in its stomach a large dragonfly, an insect also of rather open 
spaces, while Biittikofer records in the stomachs of his specimens beetles and 
other insects. He secured two on the Du, as well as two others at Soforé Place, 
St. Paul’s River, “in brushwood” (that is, second growth), surrounded by 
high forest. 
MEROPIDAE  Bee-eaters 
Merops persicus persicus Pallas. Blue-cheeked Bee-eater 
Merops persicus Pallas, Reise, vol. 2, p. 708, 1773: Caspian Sea. 
Length about 6 inches; above green, washed, especially on rump with blue; forehead and 
broad eyebrow stripe light blue; a black band on side of face, below it a narrow white, and a 
broader blue one; upper throat yellow, lower throat reddish brown; belly green. Southwest 
Asia wintering in Africa. 
Under the name M. superciliosus, Biittikofer (1889, p. 117) records having 
taken a single bird at Mt. Olive and another at Schieffelinsville, which Reiche- 
now refers to the Persian Bee-eater. 
Aerops albicollis albicollis (Vieillot). White-throated Bee-eater; ‘‘Dry-time Bird”’ 
Merops albicollis Vieillot, Nouv. Dict. des Sci. Nat., vol. 14, p. 15, 1817: Senegal. 
A small species, length 11 inches; crown, eye-stripe, and throat-band black, the last edged 
with blue; back green; tail blue above, the central pair of feathers elongated; lower breast green- 
ish, belly buff. Wing with outer primaries blue on outer edge, then bronze; secondaries buffy 
with black ends; tertiaries blue. Iris red. Senegal to Gaboon and Belgian Congo. 
As in Sierra Leone (Kemp, 1905), this is a common bird in the drier parts 
of the year, but definitely migrates, probably in April, and is practically ab- 
sent until the rains abate somewhat, returning again in November. No doubt 
it was for this reason that we did not see it from the time of our arrival in early 
July, until November 2, when a small flock appeared at Moala, and a few 
days later Whitman found them at Monrovia. The small flocks we saw would 
perch here and there on the tops of small trees or on dead branches, sallying 
forth after insects in longer or shorter flights on spread wings. 
